Nuclear reactor marks half century

Hiding on North Campus between the Media Union and the Lurie Engineering Center is the University's nuclear reactor. The small building has produced hundreds of research projects. Today and tomorrow, the campus community will celebrate it's 50th anniversary with a symposium.

The symposium will feature 35 speakers presenting their research on nuclear technology. The speakers will spend two days discussing various issues, from the reactor's history to future plans for the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Project, which created the reactor.

JEREMY MENCHIK/Daily The University's nuclear reactor in the Phoenix Memorial Laboratory on North Campus is

Built in the mid 1950s, the reactor was created as a memorial for the 600 University students, faculty and staff who perished during World War II. With a $1 million grant from the Ford Motor Co., the University Board of Regents established the reactor to be "dedicated to the peaceful uses of nuclear sciences and technology, as a living war memorial," said John Lee, chair of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences and interim MMPP director.

The MMPP will host the symposium at White Hall in the Cooley Building on North Campus. The two-day event is free and open to the public. The presentations "will be understandable by the general public," Senior Research Associate John Lindsay said.

"It will be a nice opportunity to bring back former students and faculty who used to be and are still active in the field, and present research," said Bill Martin, professor of Nuclear Engineering and radiological sciences.

"It's like a birthday party without the cake," Martin said.

The reactor is noted for four main projects.

The first is the eradicated steel samples used in nuclear power plants. This involves testing pressure vessel samples to see how they behave over a period of time. The nuclear reactor has an accelerated aging process, so an element that chemically would take 40 years to age would take only three to four years in the reactor.

The second project is the nuclear activation analysis process, which eradicates environmental artifacts with a one-in-a-million accuracy to date the chemical elements in the samples. In addition to age, the nuclear reactor can tell how much of an element is in an artifact.

Neutron radiography is a type of X-ray vision that can see through metal, unlike regular X-rays. This helps discover how oil of lubricants are working inside of automobile engines.

Outside of the nuclear engineering department is the nuclear medicine research that assists in diagnosis and clinical treatments of brain disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

The reactor is considered one of the three most effective reactors in the country, and the only reactor on a college campus that can work around the clock. It works on a two-week schedule - on for 10 days and off for four, Lee said.

The facility is open to anyone on campus, and the 23 researchers at the MMPP also work with people outside if the University in Engineering and physical sciences.

The reactor is not only used by scientists. The department of classical studies uses the reactor to date archeological artifacts, and an English professor was able to date an ancient manuscript.

"In general, it contributes clearly to research in nuclear sciences, and the education of both undergraduate and graduate students," said assistant to vice president for Research Lee Katterman.

The symposium will emphasize how to continue using this apparatus with a focus on continued funding.

"Obviously wind and solar power won't fill the energy void as we had hoped, so it is important to emphasize the continued studying and training of scientists to take advantage of this research," said Lindsay, who will be speaking this afternoon about "how to get numerical results from images using neutron radiography."

In regard to financing the reactor, "we need to try to think about how we can find support. It is expensive to run, and the federal government is not supporting us the way they used to, while society has waffled in support," Katterman said.

"Society has the tendency to link nuclear reactors with social concerns, yet this can flag problems before they harm the public," he said.

contained under 26 feet of de-ionized water and glows blue without artificial light or colors.

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